When I first moved to the NYC at age of 18, I started living my life in English and all the sudden, I became this selfish person. I was starting every single sentence with “I.” I am talking about myself all the time. I woke up. I went to school. I felt tired. I ate this and that for lunch. I am happy. I am sad.  I’m talking about myself all day long. “I” have never been this way. What is going on?

I grew up in Japan. Japanese language is very different from English in its thought process and structure. We hardly ever use pronouns. Most of the time, it is pretty obvious who and what we are talking about from the context and flow of the conversation. “I” is omitted. (So as he, she, it, etc) Only foreigners who are studying Japanese say “I.” Lol.  Also, in Japanese, verbs come at the very end of the sentences and everything else - nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. - come before verbs. We don’t do articles, either. For example, the word-for-word translation of “I ate a delicious cupcake” would be “Delicious cupcake ate.” There is no “a” and there is no “I.”